Mathematicians Discover the Perfect Way to Multiply
Quanta Magazine
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Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation, whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences. Karatsuba’s method involves breaking up the digits of a number and recombining them in a novel way that allows you to substitute a small number of additions and subtractions for a large number of multiplications. Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine
“With addition, you do it a year earlier in school because it’s much easier, you can do it in linear time, almost as fast as reading the numbers from right to left,” said Martin Fürer, a mathematician at Pennsylvania State University who in 2007 created what was at the time the fastest multiplication algorithm.
Source: www.wired.com